Too Beautiful For Words

 On a frosty December morning, with temperatures struggling to get to zero, and the sun as dim as an old man's eyes, the landscape is too beautiful for words. So, I'm not going to waffle on this week, I'll let the pictures tell the story for me. Sit back and enjoy this walk, along the banks of the Derwent, from Portinscale to Keswick.

It's the Winter Solstice next week, heralding the joys of Yuletide. However you are celebrating winter, we wish you a happy one. 

Steve, Ishbel, and Mattie

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Series 14 Springtime in Cumbria

 

Welcome to a new series of The Crete and Cumbria Nature Blog. Still in Cumbria, thanks to the necessary travel restrictions still in place, but I'm not complaining. Cumbria is a wonderful place to spend the Springtime. So, let's celebrate by looking out for the first signs of Spring, such as newborn lambs, primroses bursting through last years fallen leaves, trees and woody shrubs budding and flowering, and insects pollinating the plants as their blooms burst forth.

Continuing our railway theme from last week's imaginary trip on The Cockermouth Circle Line, our journey today starts at Keswick station and follows the old railway line towards Threlkeld. The line, which used to link Penrith to Cockermouth, was axed in the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, and is now a tarmacadamed walk/cycle track suitable for wheelchair users. Just listen to Spring beginning around the station with this symphony of birdsong.

The River Greta (which means stony stream in Old Norse) will be our constant companion on this walk, as it zigzags back and forth across our trail. There's a Woodpigeon down there, collecting sticks for what he laughingly thinks of as a nest. Whereas some birds construct intricate structures of grass, moss, wool and other materials, pigeons just seem to launch twigs at a tree and see what sticks. How their eggs and chicks remain aloft is one of nature's great mysteries.

There are ponds along the side of the trail, with Marsh Marigolds bursting forth. These are predominantly insect pollinated and have an unusual method of seed dispersal. When the seeds have matured they are surrounded by a 'splash cup'. When a raindrop hits the splash cup the seeds are bouced out. They are also surrounded by a spongy lifejacket so they simply float away from the parent plant. Like their relatives, the Lesser Celandine, which we have been seeing a lot of in recent weeks, their leaves are edible when cooked but poisonous when raw. (see Longlands Lake). And clumped together on the bottom of the pond we have frogspawn. You can tell that it's frogspawn and not toadspawn because of the way it clumps together; toads lay their spawn in long strings.

You'll have noticed that all the bridges, the tunnel and much of the infrastructure on this trail are brand new. In 2015, Storm Desmond produced such a torrent of water that all the old railway bridges were destroyed. Seeing the river so calm and peaceful today, it's hard to imagine the scale of the flood that could have wreaked such havoc. It took five years to repair the damage and the trail was only reopened at the end of last year. I've included a few pictures of fungi and lichens, not because they are signs of Spring, for they are with us all the year round. I just didn't want them to feel left out.

We also have caterpillars crawling about and this one features in my new series on Steve's Nature Plus called Minibeast Monday in which I tell you a little bit more about the insects and other creepy-crawlies that appear in my blog posts. Much of the information is taken from The Quick Guide To Creepy-Crawlies which tells you who is related to whom, how to identify them in their various stages of life, and plenty of other interesting facts (like whether they are likely to bite or sting you). Everyone tells me that it's a very interesting and informative book but modesty precludes me from agreeing with them wholeheartedly. I still refer to it when I come across something I've never seen before.

I'll leave you with this beautiful picture of the River Greta flowing through the Lakeland pastures with a little Grey Wagtail bobbing around on the boulders. See you through the week on Steve's Nature Plus.

Happy Springtime,

Steve

LINKS:

Steve's Nature Plus Join me at The Old Cornmill and follow me throughout the week for all the news that doesn't fit into the blog.

Share your nature thoughts, photos and comments on Naturalists (the facebook page that accompanies this blog)

Dawn By The Riverside

Kingfisher

One of the good things about the longer nights in winter is that you don’t have to get up at an unearthly hour to be set up and waiting for the dawn chorus. This week I thought we’d take the car and park up by the little river which enters the sea just to the east of Ierapetra. Surprisingly a car makes a very good hide and as long as you’re in an area where birds are used to cars (almost everywhere) they ignore them.

We’ll go and have a look at the sea later where I expect we’ll find our old friend the kingfisher out on the rocks slyly eyeing the waters below for an unwary shoal of small fish.

Giant Cane

Meanwhile we’ll settle ourselves here under the bridge and wait for the light. Grab one of those canes will you and prop it up overhanging the water. It never hurts to put a convenient perch for dragonflies in a good spot for the camera. This is Giant Cane, by the way, and can grow to thirty feet or more. It’s in flower at the moment but those attractive, golden sprays are pretty much sterile in the seed department. You can see its main method of propagation just here in front of you; a stem falls into the water and new shoots appear at the nodes. It’s a pretty useful plant, being used for everything from construction to basket weaving and medicinally for the treatment of dropsy (oedema). Incidentally if you play the oboe then this is what you are sticking in your mouth each time you blow; Giant Cane is also the main source of reeds for woodwind instruments.

Grey Wagtail

The light is coming up and the sparrows and the hooded crows are starting to arrive and here comes one of my favourite winter visitors, the Grey Wagtail. He usually visits about this time of year and stays until March, bobbing up and down like a demented clockwork toy anywhere where there’s a bit of shallow water. He’s looking for insects of course which is his main food source but he’s not beyond taking the odd tadpole or two or even a small fish if one happens to chance by. I see he’s been joined by another bobber, a black redstart (which you will recall we met last week in Red Autumn). Although they both share this tail wagging habit they are not closely related; the Wagtails and Pipits are from the Motacillidae family whereas the Redstarts are from the Muscicapidae family along with the Flycatchers, Chats, Wheatears and Robins.

I don’t know about you but I’m getting a bit stiff now so let’s go and have a look at the surface of the water and see what insects we can find. If you pass me that pipette from the bag we’ll take a sample of water from the bottom and look at it under the microscope when we get back.

Termite alate

Now this is interesting and not instantly recognizable for what it is, which is a termite.  You don’t often think of them as winged insects but this is an alate; (which simply means winged form) and aletes are destined to become the Kings and Queens of the colony. The other insects that have alates are the ants but termites and ants are not related (even though termites are called white ants in many places).  Termites are in fact more closely related to cockroaches in the insect order Blattodea. The reason I find this discovery of ours particularly interesting is that, according to Fauna Europea, termites are absent from Crete which is not surprising as they’re  more associated with tropical and subtropical regions. As I’ve said before (see Phenomenal Phenology) south east Crete is getting hotter. More evidence of climate change perhaps?

Mediterranean Coastal Snail

While we’re out of the car let’s have a look along the bank and see what else is about. Here’s a gorgeous little fellow having his breakfast. There are two snails locally which look very similar; the Chocolate-banded Snail (Eobania vermiculata) and the Mediterranean Coastal Snail (Theba pisana). They both have these chocolate brown stripes at the base whereas the rest of the shell can be quite variable. The main clue is in the size. This one is a Mediterranean Coastal Snail which has a width of around 15mm in this area whereas the Chocolate-banded Snail is around twice as big at 22-32mm. Sometimes the Coastal gives you an extra clue by having a blue-grey whorl at the apex which the Chocolate –banded deems a bit too flash and will never be seen wearing.

We’ve been out for about three hours now so I think it’s time to go back and make a whacking great kedgeree for breakfast and then we’ll put that water sample under the microscope and see who’s living at the bottom of our river. I think I’ve got some seaweed in the fridge that will add a bit of oomph to the kedgeree. You haven’t tried kedgeree with seaweed before? You haven’t lived.

Ostracod or Seed Shrimp

That’s better, you can’t do microscopy on an empty stomach. Right, where did you put that pipette? Just mount a drop up on the slide so…  adjust the focus… and hello, a freshwater mussel I think. [But I think wrong. I am reliably informed that it is an Ostracod or Seed Shrimp. Having found the specimen in freshwater it most likely belongs to the order Podacopida]
Mussels are molluscs of course, like the snail we saw earlier, but there are several Classes of mollusc. Mussels are Bivalves because they have two valves (or shells as we commonly call them – a somewhat confusing use of the word valve) whereas the Mediterranean Coastal Snail is a Gastropod which means stomach foot. Marine gastropods tend to rasp seaweeds from rocks and terrestrial gastropods go for more conventional chewing like you and me. Seed Shrimps, on the other hand, are gulpers. Something swims by, the Seed Shrimp gets all excited, the valves open and in goes the prey. There he goes look, just press the Video Link and you can see it on your screen (he does this twice after 10 seconds and 45 seconds). Aren’t microscopes wonderful? That chap can’t be any more than a third of a millimetre long.

I don’t think we can top that this week so we’ll call it a day. Just a quick hello to everyone in Scandinavia – nice to have you back. (They’ve been enjoying the 24 hour daylight throughout the summer and now that the dark days are here they’re coming back to the blog – you see I know where you all live). Tell me, how do bats get on in Scandinavia? I’ve never thought about this before. Do they aestivate during the summer and then go hyperactive in the winter?

Now if only I could get rid of this ear-worm. Ever since we started out I’ve had the song “Down by the Riverside” going over and over in my brain with ‘Down’ replaced by ‘Dawn’ Hence the blog title. All the best and happy hunting until next week.

·         * * * STOP PRESS * * *

·         From: Pest Control Technology magazine Mon 17^th November 2014

·         Termites have been the No. 1 structural pest in the United States for longer than most can remember, yet at a recent one-day conference organized by PestBusiness.com and held in Paris, France, it was made clear to the delegates that this is now a real threat facing Europe. Seventy-five percent of the market is in France, but Spain and Italy are fast developing and there are soon likely to be significant additional markets in countries such as Greece and Turkey.

http://www.pctonline.com/Paris-termites-conference.aspx

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Special thanks this week to all at the EntomologyGroup on Facebook with whom I had a long conversation about termites (including an offer to have some cooked for me in Uganda which I was sorely tempted to take up).
And also to invertzoo for identifying the "mussel" as an Ostracod or Seed Shrimp.

LINKS:

Naturalists (the facebook page that accompanies this blog)

Flowers of Crete;

BIRDS OF CRETE

Crete Birding

Greek Butterflies and Moths

AquaworldAquarium

Visit Greece (National Government Tourist Office)